Ok, that's it.

I am back from RSA, where I had extremely limited computer access and hence could not do any real-time blogging. But let's just say that Truewit's griping sums up my own reaction to the conference--but with teh funny added in. I think I may have attended my last RSA conference. Since it comes so close to SAA, a much better run conference and one that increasingly includes both drama and nondramatic literature (but without 1000 panels on neo-Platonism in the quattrocento), and since I end up at SAA almost every year, I just can't see going through the stress and hassle of two conferences in a month when one of them is so poorly run and so annoying in so many ways. I did have two seriously delicious meals in Miami, but other than that my time there seemed to involve: endless cab rides that cost $25-30 whether they were 1 mile or 15 miles; a glorious view of the Miami skyline from whichever of the 100 highways cutting through town I happened to be on, a skyline that resembles a post-apocalyptic 1970s movie like Omega Man, with lifeless cranes dotting the landscape of half-built, de-skinned skyscrapers that are doomed never to be completed; not going to conference sessions because I was so infuriated by everything involved in trying to get to one (see Truewit's posts), and because I found myself needing a drink constantly, to lower my blood pressure; going to South Beach and feeling incredibly old, exhausted, scrawny, and with way too high a percentage of my nipples remaining unexposed; drinking in the Radisson bar, where there was about one bartender for every 500 conference-goers; this--combined with the ridiculously small room block, the distance to the overflow hotel, the bad food in the hotel, the absurdly slow room service, the remarkably consistent ineffectiveness of my "Privacy, please" doorknob sign, and the many old people that I felt like I sort of recognized but didn't really know--gave me the feeling that I was attending the worst wedding ever. Suffice to say that high on my list of things to look forward to for the weekend was flying home, and yet Miami managed to ruin even that delight with massive lines and cancellations at MIA. Remind me why all the basketball players want to be traded to the Heat? Oh yeah, no income tax. And if you are a billionaire, you can have an incredible mansion on one of those islands that seem to have no roads other than the one that leads straight from the "on"-bridge to the "off"-bridge. Visitors are definitely not welcome, and residents seem to travel mainly by speedboat to their private docks. RSA would have been much more enjoyable if we could have booked rooms at Shaq's house. Grrr. And I don't mean Andrew.